Monday’s X-Prize

They did it! SpaceshipOne successfully reached 100km above the earth for the second time in two weeks, winning the $10 million Ansari X-Prize and beginning a new era in civilian space exploration. Brian Binnie piloted this time.
This on the 47th anniversary of Sputnik’s launch.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, says Microsoft is about to win the digital media war. “There’s no way you get there with Apple,” he said, “the critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation video device,” presumably from Microsoft. He also accused about 5 million people of being thieves saying, “The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen’.” Is this the guy you want in charge of digital media devices?

Meanwhile NASA is having trouble getting the space shuttle back off the ground. The series of hurricanes that has pummeled the Florida coast this season will force a delay in the shuttle’s return to space. Expect the next launch sometime between mid-May and July.

Kodak has won a patent lawsuit against Sun and plans to seek damages of one billion dollars. Kodak claimed Sun’s Java breached patents Kodak bought from Wang in 1997, several years after Java was released. Groklaw’s Pamela Jones says the decision is a perfect example of why software patents don’t work.

Online payment system Worldpay has been under a massive DDoS attack all weekend. 30,000 merchants, including Sony Music. have been unable to take online payments.

2 Replies to “Monday’s X-Prize”

I just thought you ought to know that according to the article, the stamps are still valid postage. This program isn’t dead in the water, either. The USPS is going to review it and may open it again in around 90 days.

Anyone in their mid-20s or younger does not remember an internet not utterly dominated by today’s giant digital platforms. After all, the idea of having a full, unencumbered internet experience without ever needing a Google or Facebook account is pretty much inconceivable now. All ecommerce roads eventually lead back to Amazon. All your online activity […]

A former Nasa engineer spent six months building a glitter bomb trap to trick thieves after some parcels were stolen from his doorstep. The device, hidden in an Apple Homepod box, used four smartphones, a circuit board and 1lb (453g) of glitter.

In a blog post Monday, Google said it would lease a large office building at 550 Washington St. in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood and make it the centerpiece of its new 1.7 million-square-foot Hudson Square Campus. Google plans to invest $1 billion in capital improvements to the campus, which will also include two nearby buildings […]

France said at the start of December it would start taxing Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, the big US technology companies known as GAFA, if European Union finance ministers failed to agree on a bloc-wide digital tax next year.

Charter Communications, the parent company of Spectrum, has agreed to a $174.2 million settlement with Attorney General Barbara Underwood, following the 2017 lawsuit that saw the AG’s office sue the internet provider over misleading internet speeds. The lawsuit, led by then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman alleged that speeds were up to 80 percent slower than advertised.